Asylum
by Shinobi Saru Corp
Summary: Kaitli Bender is having a very difficult time. Fictional characters are, apparently, popping into reality, and although they are mostly people she is very fond of, there are a few unsavory and frightening people with a fetish for world domination. What starts out as a bizarre jaunt with a few favorites soon turns into a grueling battle for the survival of her world. No pairings.
1. Chapter 1: Fiction in Reality

**Written by Ryuu**

**Rated T for violence.  
**

**AN**: Hullo! Welcome to my slightly odd and extremely difficult to categorize story. This is a self-insert, I suppose, although I'm not so much inserting myself into other people's stories as I am inserting other people into mine. This is a crossover of more than just FFVII and The Avengers, I'm mixing original characters in as well. We'll see how it turns out. This all came from a concept that sprang into my mind ages ago, no doubt a result of insisting "But they do exist! They _do!_" too often. But I can't tell you exactly what that concept is, exactly, because spoilers...

Anyway, I hope that you enjoy this!

* * *

**Chapter 1: Fiction in Reality**

April 12

I lay on my bed in the fetal position.

_I can't believe Arwen's dead,_ I thought. _God help me…please…_

It hurt so much all I could really do was pray. It had been eight years since we had lost a dog, and I'd forgotten what it felt like. I'd gotten so comfortable, my life had been so easy and cushy, and now I felt as though the world had dropped from underneath me. I've always felt things too intensely.

_Please…_

_She was kinda old and decrepit, y'know,_ a rather irritatingly correct voice inside my head interjected.

_Shut up, Hóuzi. I'm praying._

_You do realize, if people knew how often you held imaginary conversations with your characters, they'd think you were insane._

_Shut up._

I'd invented Hóuzi on a whim a week before. His inception was pretty simple. I was reading a manga with a character with ridiculously long black hair tied back in a ponytail. I loved the hair. I know I'm weird, but I just loved the hair, so I invented a character with that hair, decided he was Chinese, thought he looked a bit mischievous, realized the hair reminded me of a tail, and looked up the Mandarin word for "monkey" on Google Translate. Thus, Hóuzi was born.

I was getting really irritated with him at this point, though. He didn't actually have a place in my stories. I just made him up for his hair. So why was my imaginary conversation being held with _him_? Usually I pretend to talk with characters I know like the back of my hand. And he was trying to talk to me at a really, really bad time.

"Your pixie cut is a bit shaggy, you need a trim." He tugged at my slightly overgrown hair. I could've gutted him.

"I do _not_ want to hear how _I_ need a haircut from _you_, Mr. Bum-Length-Ponytail."

And then it clicked in my brain that he had actually tugged at my slightly overgrown hair. I sat bolt upright.

"Wha'…th' heck…"

"Yo!"

"_Hóuzi?!_"

He was sitting in the lotus position on my bed, grinning so huge that his eyes were practically shut.

I looked for a while, waiting for my brain to catch up with my eyes.

"It's not polite to stare," he said, frowning reproachfully at me.

"GET OFF MY BED!" I bellowed, shoving him off. The awkwardness of the situation had taken a while to register, but it had in the end.

"How are you even here?" I said, peeking over the edge of my bedspread. "I made you up!"

"What! No 'I'm so sorry I pushed you off the bed, are you alright?!'" He sounded a little grumpy.

"You're a master martial artist. You're fine." A new tidbit that popped into my head.

"It's still polite to ask!" He snapped waspishly, glaring at me over the edge of my bed, his head positioned so that only his eyes were visible. It looked really funny, I thought mercilessly.

Hóuzi lay propped up on his left elbow, scratching the back of his head and scanning my room. "Anyway, we think Bianca got through Asylum to here. Hal and Loki and Sephy and Genny were worried, and sent me to check on you, but we haven't perfected the technique yet, so I'm about to disappear. I think you'll be fine."

"Say what?" I said blankly.

Hóuzi disappeared.

I chewed the inside of my cheek, trying to think. I'd had tea this morning when I normally had coffee. Did ordinary Twinnings English Breakfast Tea usually cause hallucinations? Maybe it did when combined with emotional stress…?

* * *

May 11

_I'm in LONDON,_ I thought gleefully. It was about the only thing I could think. I hadn't slept in 24 hours, I was a little low blood sugar, jetlagged and extremely excited. My brain had nearly gone completely kaput, only able to relay that last dying message over and over again. _I'm in LONDON._

There was the Shard that The Doctor had ridden a motorcycle up in The Bells of St. John. The London Eye, Big Ben, the Thames—I was in heaven!

I was also delighted with the large population of cute Asian guys—a particular weakness of mine. The people here dressed very strangely, though. The guys were generally uber hip, with tight jeans and silly hair. I even spotted a bright ginger-brown head and rather flamboyant red coat out of the corner of my—

My head whipped round, but I couldn't spot even those colours in the crowds of London. I shook my head. My brain sure did play funny tricks on me sometimes. I obviously needed some food to fuel up on before I went completely bonkers.

* * *

June 1

The tail-end of the anime conference, the geekiest event of the year. I was incredibly exhausted, but ridiculously happy. I was happy that I'd been able to come, and I was suffering from some pretty incredible Warm Fuzzies—an aftereffect of a hug from Vic Mignogna. Seriously, we should send him to the Middle East to hug Taliban members and Syrians and BOOM! world peace. No one should be allowed to be that good at hugging.

Exhaustion, Warm Fuzzies. One of the best days in my life. And I was with Nira. Does life get any better? Well, maybe if Louise had been there. Then it would have been really perfect, but as it was it was pretty dang near perfect.

I trotted out of the bathroom to rejoin my friends. Naturally, I ran right into a Sephiroth cosplayer. Talk about awkward. Apparently I can't see when I'm tired and happy.

"S-sorry," I stammered, trying to regain my balance. I failed. The cosplayer gripped the collar of my _Vote Loki Laufeyson 2012_ shirt as I went down and placed me back on my feet. It appeared he had an unusually strong arm for a cosplayer. I usually imagined cosplayers to be weakling basement dwellers who hardly ever moved, like me.

"Thanks, man," I said, glancing at his face. My insides froze. Those weren't contacts. Coloured contacts always bug me because they look really fake, and those weren't coloured contacts.

The not-cosplayer grunted in response, and walked into the colourful, costumed crowd with long, powerful strides. I blinked and he was gone. I gaped, and felt my neck to make sure I hadn't been decapitated while I wasn't looking.

That was the third time something like this had happened, I realized. Was I going completely mad?

But a mere few seconds of Sephiroth's cold stare couldn't fully overcome the aftereffects of a Vic Hug, and in a moment I'd forgotten about him and skipped over to my friends.

* * *

June 24

A simple volunteer job that I go to twice a week shouldn't have stressed me out that much, but it did. I've always hated being away from home unless I am at (1): Silver Dollar City, (2): England, (3): anime conferences, or (4) Nira's house. Having a payless job that took me away from home 16 hours a week really rubbed me the wrong way. I liked the people, and for the most part I didn't exactly mind going, but sometimes I'd get really stressed about it. And eventually the stress overflowed, like it always does, and got vented through tears, which is my own personal method of venting stress. My own personal, completely involuntary and really irritatingly miserable method. I went to sleep that night feeling completely drained.

I got up early the next morning to get ready to leave, and when I walked into the kitchen I saw Loki Laufeyson righting a chair. Genesis Rhapsodos was rolling his eyes and protesting that he was innocent, and Sephiroth was treating them both to a truly blood curdling glare.

"Oh, Kaitli," Loki said when they saw me. "Sorry, there was a small altercation over who got the rice." He glanced meaningfully at Genesis and Sephiroth. "Don't worry, Genesis cast a few barriers and nothing was actually_ destroyed_, exactly."

"Don't forget the other small altercation due to _something_ someone put _in_ the rice," Genesis added scathingly, scowling at Loki.

Sephiroth merely made a slight growling noise.

I walked back into my room.

I walked back into the kitchen.

They were still there. My brain, water-logged by the early morning, could only offer one solution: _coffee_. Get to the K-Cup machine, it said. You need caffeine. I slotted a k-cup into the coffee-maker, put my mug in place, pressed the button, and watched the beautiful rich brown liquid trickle into the mug. The smell was lovely. Once it was done, I took a good swig, and then turned around.

They were still there.

I rubbed my eyes. They were still there.

"Um," I said, glancing at the clock. I was going to be late at this rate, said some bit of my mind that seemed determined to act like life was perfectly normal.

"Ah, don't worry, we're about to get out of your hair," Loki said cheerfully. Genesis glared daggers and Sephiroth simply looked as though he wanted to try and destroy the planet. Again.

I glanced at the clock again, then back at them. They were gone.

My shoulders slumped slightly and I began fixing my breakfast. Memories of the past three encounters flooded my brain—though I wasn't sure if glimpsing Genesis in London really counted as an encounter, exactly—and I began to seriously question my sanity. Especially because I'd actually forgotten about the incidents. How in heaven's name could I—could anyone?—possibly forget things like that?

"I'm not completely insane, am I?" I asked desperately.

Nira shook her head slowly, looking a little bewildered. "Actually, now that you mention it…"

"What?"

"I think I may have seen Sephiroth at the anime conference too—yes, I definitely did. How did I forget? I remember seeing him walking in the same direction you'd gone, and my brain just couldn't process it fully. And then I got distracted and forgot." She frowned. "How did I forget?" she repeated.

"_There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one,"_ I recited mentally. Not only was I not a nutter, but she had seen Sephiroth too. Which meant she believed me. Maybe she could help me figure this out; her brain functioned more reliably than mine. "From what you've told me," she mused thoughtfully, "it seems as though all four incidents happened while you were feeling extreme emotion." I nodded. "Yeah, I did actually figure that, surprisingly." "It seems like more extreme things happened when you were feeling negative emotions. When Hou…what's his name again?" "Hóuzi. And don't worry about pronouncing it right, I say it wrong, too. Chinese is fiendishly difficult." "Hóuzi showed up when you were upset over poor Arwen, and all three supervillains after you'd been really stressed, as opposed to a glimpse of Genesis in London." "When I was in ecstasies over being in London, yeah. But what about running into Sephiroth at the anime conference? I was pretty happy there and that was pretty…extreme." Extreme wasn't a strong enough word, I still got goosebumps thinking about his stare. At least when he was in my kitchen his attention had been mostly on Loki. We stared at Nira's poster of Roy Mustang (a souvenir from the anime conference), thinking. It's hard to be in her room and not stare at that poster, Mustang's just too dang good looking. "Nira," I said dully, "what's going on?"

We paused a moment to contemplate how weird this was. It was hard to accept the weirdness as real, sitting in Nira's room, staring at Roy Mustang.

"Are we absolutely certain we're not nutters?" I asked.

Nira shrugged. "I sure hope not."

"It's kinda difficult to believe at the moment."

"Just a bit, yeah."

Someone rapped at the window. Nira and I looked at each other.

"I'm not feeling very emotional right now, just kinda blank," I pointed out.

"So it shouldn't be a weirdo," Nira agreed.

We still hesitated. Whoever it was rapped again, slightly more urgently.

"Who the heck _is_ that?" I said nervously.

"We could pull the curtain back and see," Nira said. She sounded a little apprehensive.

"I think I could handle an ordinary creepster. We can just stab him with your broadsword, right?"

"It's not sharp, remember."

"Yeah, but it's big and metal and heavy."

"I'll go get it."

She trotted to the corner next to her closet and grabbed her broadsword, hesitated, and grabbed her "fantasy sword", too. It was another souvenir from the anime conference, and it also was big and metal and heavy, with some bonus sharp pointy bits.

Armed with our makeshift weapons of mass destruction, Nira pulled the curtain back.

"_Hal?!_" I yelped.

"Don't tell me—" Nira began.

"I made him uuuup," I wailed. "He's fine, he's not a creepster." I had a vague idea of him being an unbelievably nice person.

Hal, one of the few characters I had made up on a whim and who didn't actually have a place in any of my stories, like Hóuzi. Why? Why not characters I connected with more strongly?

Nira and I dashed out of her room, down the hall, through her front door and into her front yard.

"Wh-what are you doing h-here?" I panted, hunched over with my hands on my knees. To say I was woefully out of shape was an understatement.

"Can we move to the backyard first? I feel exposed here."

"What, seriously?" I said grumpily, but we all walked round the house, through the garage and into the backyard.

Once there, Hal Plantagenet smiled his large, somewhat goofy but very handsome smile. "The others sent me because I'm the most ordinary person they could get a hold of to talk to you. It seems you're easily freaked out." I thought he sounded a tad bit bitter when he said "ordinary".

I scowled. "You'd be freaked out too if you suddenly found three freakishly powerful supervillains who aren't supposed to exist in your kitchen early in the morning. I'm surprised I made it not driven insane with my head still on my shoulders!"

Hal frowned slightly. "They're not supervillains, and they wouldn't just murder a girl without a reason." Note the _without a reason_ bit.

I felt very confused. "What? They're totally supervillains! I mean, just think of all they've—"

"Oooh," Nira said.

"What?" I said, looking at her, feeling a little lost.

"Kaitli, don't you remember that project you embarked on a while back? The 'Redesigned Supervillains' one?"

"Eh?" I chewed the inside of my cheek. "Um, yeah…I tried to modify Sephiroth and Genesis so that they didn't rely completely on video-game-logic. I just made them a little more practical."

"Aaaand then you started getting all possessive, and you decided that they were alternate universe not-evil versions of the originals. Remember? And you did Loki just for kicks."

"Oh." I'd completely forgotten about that. Now that I'd thought about it, Sephiroth had had his hair tied back, had been wearing a shirt, and had had a scabbard for a considerably shortened Masamune. Genesis's outfit had been more like the one he'd had at the end of Dirge of Cerberus, tweaked a little to give him a slight cavalier vibe. He'd had a sheath for his Rapier, too. And Loki had been dressed like an ordinary person.

"You may have been in a bit of shock," Hal said helpfully, his slightly husky British accent soothing. "It's no wonder you didn't realize. Those guys are pretty overwhelming."

"So they sent you?" Nira repeated. "Because you aren't freaky?"

"And I'm capable of proper communication, unlike Hóuzi," he added.

"So communicate!" I said. "What's going on?"

Hal scratched the back of his dirty blond head. "We-ell, how do I put it…it's very complicated. Basically, it appears that people you've made up are popping into reality, and we've just about figured out how to do it at will. And I know you didn't make up Sephiroth and the others," he said as I opened my mouth, "but you modified them, and apparently that's enough."

"You said that you've figured out how to come into reality at will," Nira said.

"Just about, yeah; we haven't quite perfected it yet."

"So why were y'all popping up in the first place?"

Hal shrugged. "We think it might have to do with Kaitli being waaaay overly emotional."

I bristled. "Oi!"

Nira did a fist pump. "I knew it!"

"Thanks for your support, Nira," I grumbled.

"Sorry."

"Apparently when you're experiencing extreme emotion, especially negative emotion, your mind latches onto your characters out of, perhaps, a desperation to escape, or for company, and…well, pulls them out of your head or something, we're still not quite sure what exactly actually happens."

Nira fist pumped again. "Yes! I told you."

I sighed. "That still doesn't explain Sephiroth at the anime conference. I was very happy at anime conference."

"Vic Hugs are magic," Nira said matter-of-factly.

Well, I certainly couldn't deny that.

"Wait," I said suddenly. "Hóuzi, when he turned up, said something about thinking I 'would be fine'. Why wouldn't I be fine? And why are y'all so desperate to explain things to me?"

"We-ell," Hal said slowly, increasing the frequency of his scratching, "like I said, people you've made up and/or modified are popping into reality."

"So wh—" I began, then stopped, horrified.

Hal nodded. "I see it's struck you finally."

"What?" Nira said, concerned.

"I tend to keep my stories pretty close to my chest, I don't think that I've told you much about them," I said weakly. "Well…no story's complete without a villain, right?"

"Oh. Oh dear."

Hal smiled a little dryly. "For such an apparently innocent young woman, Kaitli here has invented some remarkably nasty people."

I tried to ignore the jab. Despite the extreme summer heat I was beginning to feel chilled.

"Kaitli," Nira said, trying to sound calm, "I know you've got a slightly twisted imagination—I do too, after all—but you haven't made up anyone _that_ unpleasant, have you?"

"Yes," I said faintly. My mind had instantly pulled up images of some of the worst characters I'd made up. I wanted to hide behind the nearest sofa. We were _so_ dead.


	2. Chapter 2: I Get Blown Up

**AN:** If you want to know more about Bianca's background, and have time on your hands, you can read my story _But Pardon, Gentles All_. Of course, that probably will just confuse you more if you're not familiar with _The Taming of the Shrew_, but oh well.

* * *

**Chapter 2: I Get Blown Up**

Hal grinned. "You'll be glad to know that it was just your modified version of Bianca from _The Taming of the Shrew_ that we think came through."

I stared at him. "Do you mean to tell me that you just gave me the scare of my life for _nothing_?!" I shook my head. "I made her as a joke! I was writing funny sequels to some of Shakespeare's comedies, and I made Bianca into an evil over-the-top villainess, because she irritated me."

"She's a little upset about being made into a joke, actually. And you're the one who decided that she had no qualms about murdering people."

I gaped at him.

Hal's eyes shifted from me to right behind me. "So, you find anything?"

"No," said a deep, quiet voice.

Nira and I glanced at each other, and slowly turned around. Sephiroth stood behind us, apparently ignoring our existence, his face absolutely blank. Knowing that he wasn't evil and insane and likely to drive us mad before skewering us and destroying our planet didn't make him much less freaky. His long silver bangs drifted ethereally across his face, his slit-pupiled cyan eyes bored into Hal. Hal, to his credit, didn't seem unnerved. I realized suddenly that Hal must be used to it. How much time did my characters spend talking about me behind my back? And to think that, theoretically, they did this all inside my own head! How did I not know all that they were thinking, all that they ever said?

I was suddenly very glad that Hal had insisted on talking in the backyard. Sephiroth rather…stands out, shall we say.

Nira's eyes were nearly bugging out of her head. This was the first time she'd seen him up close. She looked about as scared as I felt.

"Bianca is surprisingly talented at hiding her tracks," Sephiroth continued. "She does not seem to be targeting Kaitlin quite yet." He spoke a little slowly, as though weighing each word as he said it. He had one of those voices you could listen to all day, one that vibrated your entire being, from your body to your soul. Well, it made you vibrate with fear, anyway. Perhaps it would be more pleasant if it weren't so cold.

And dang, it was weird hearing my name said with that voice. That more than anything else that drove it home to me that this was actually happening—Sephiroth has a very vivid Presence, and hearing my name, I fully realized for the first time that these weren't just some sort of, I dunno, holograms spouting lines from the Final Fantasy VII games.

"So, may we go now?" Sephiroth was one of those gifted people who make what would normally sound like a request for permission sound like an irrevocable order.

Hal nodded. "I think I've explained everything I can."

"What, that's _it_?" Nira and I said simultaneously.

Hal shrugged. "That's all we know, honestly. But we thought you might like affirmation that you're not insane."

I said "Yeah, thanks." Sephiroth made a small noise that may or may not have been a snort. I supposed, to his coldly logical mind, all girls were insane, especially unusually emotional ones like me.

Sephiroth turned from us and held his left hand out in front of him at about waist height, fingers together and pointing outwards, almost as though he was playing with a sock puppet. He brought his hand sharply upwards to about face height, and suddenly spread out his fingers. It was the most bizarre thing I'd ever seen. Streaks of pale green light followed his fingers up and out, spreading even farther than his outstretched fingertips to make an eerie glowing tree-like shape. It grew larger and split down the middle of its trunk, opening up into a pitch black hole. Hal stepped through it, Sephiroth following. It snapped shut behind them, the green lights shrank to a single tiny spark, which floated gently to the ground and perched on a blade of grass, slowly fading away.

"Did that really just happen?" Nira asked weakly as I reached down.

I had been seized with the sudden irresistible urge to catch that pale green spark before it died. I don't usually give in to impulses like that, but I suppose I _had_ just been shaken up pretty badly.

"Kaitli, stop, don't touch that!" Nira said, echoing the practical bit of my mind.

"OUCH!" I said. The little booger had stuck to my finger and it _hurt_! It felt like when you get popped by static, except it didn't stop.

Nira reached out to try and help me, only to get popped herself. But that last effort on the spark's part seemed to take up the rest of its life. It winked out of existence.

Nira and I just stared at my finger for a minute before Nira's mom poked her head out the back door. "Aren't you girls hungry?"

It seemed even Sephiroth and weird glowing booger-sparks couldn't ruin our appetite. Nira and I were ravenous. We couldn't help but give each other bewildered and excited looks all throughout supper, though. We were both confused, but we felt as though things were about to get really interesting.

"Hey, Kaitli," Nira said. "I just realized—SOLDIERs must be super heat resistant. Sephiroth was running around in hundred degree temperatures wearing tons of black leather."

I gasped. "Holy cow, you're right! Wow! I wish I was that heat resistant."

"Me too," Nira said enviously.

We spent the rest of the evening fangirling. It's a good way to deal with stress.

* * *

I glared at the lawn mower. I was hot. I was thirsty. I was tired. My glasses were beginning to slip down my nose, which was dripping sweat. Why did pieces have to start falling off the mower _now_? Dad had just gone into the house to do something, and I was way too filthy to go inside! Now I had to wait for him to come out, and I had to hope he could fix it.

I sat near the bottom of the driveway. No way no how was I sitting in the grass, I'd had too many run-ins with chiggers in my life. An irritatingly loud sports car drove by a little too quickly. That was the fifth time in the past hour. Sometimes whoever owned that car got it into his head that he wanted to strut his stuff to the entire neighbourhood, and he would drive around in circles for ages. It really ticked me off. Mentally ranting against this guy did make me feel better, though.

A huge white van with tinted windows appeared at the end of the street. An _Inception_ van, I thought vaguely, the same thing I always thought when I saw a van like that, ever since watching that movie. I was losing focus now, my mind trotting off to la-la land. La-la land was just more fun.

The _Inception_ van drove past. Or it should have driven past.

I'd heard that Hollywood messed up explosions to make them more theatrical. Some detached part of my mind noted that the simple distortions of light rippling outwards looked far more intimidating than gaudy fireballs.

* * *

I couldn't breathe, I couldn't hear anything, I couldn't see anything, I couldn't feel anything. I could, however, smell and taste: smoke and blood. I began to panic. I struggled to work my lungs, but for what seemed like an eternity they wouldn't respond. Finally I took a shallow breath, let it out, took another. I focused on just breathing for several moments. When I thought that I'd got the breathing thing down, I tried to move. I couldn't, but feeling began to return to me. I thought that I was lying on my face on concrete, probably the driveway still. Everything hurt, and I was fairly certain that I'd skinned my face. That would explain the taste and smell of blood.

Things didn't hurt as badly as I'd expected them to, though.

I turned my head to the left, barely able to lift my nose off of the concrete and letting my head down again rather quickly. My sight had begun to return as well. I didn't have my glasses on anymore, but I could see light and shapes now. Something large and crimson and black was in front of me.

As the crimson thing came into focus, I realized it was a red coat accompanied by a pair of legs clad in black trousers. I shifted my eyes upwards slightly, and saw that there was a little bit of glowy light green something. It was small and round, whatever it was. I felt the area deep inside my ears warm, and start to ache. In a moment, though my ears hurt now, I began to be able to hear.

The figure in front of me was murmuring under his breath, his voice becoming more and more frustrated sounding, though I couldn't actually make out what he was saying.

There were two more voices, louder but farther off. I managed to detect a British accent. I began to be able to make out the words, though it still sounded as though I was listening from underwater.

"I didn't think Bianca was capable of this," said British Accent.

"Hal might be able to work out exactly what kind of explosive this is," said the other voice calmly, "but I have never seen anything like it."

"Neither have I, and that's saying something," the figure in front of me said. He had a rich voice with a deep, resonant quality about it. I suddenly realized where I'd heard it before. That was Gackt's voice! Why was my favourite singer right in front of me? Speaking perfect English? Cosplaying as Genesis Rhapsodos?

Oh. Right. Maybe the explosion had killed some of my brain cells. I seemed to be a little slow on the uptake right now.

Genesis swore. "My Barrier should have protected her completely," he snarled. "I don't like this."

"Perhaps materia does not work as well away from the Life Str—" began the calm voice.

"I figured that out already, _General_." I couldn't really blame him for snapping at Sephiroth. I knew all too well that people who were calmly being rational in times of extreme emotion inspired large quantities of anger in those actually experiencing the extreme emotion. I was totally with Genesis on this one.

I shifted my eyes to look through the crook in Genesis's knee at the other two standing in the blackened rubble in the middle of the road. The house across the street had all of its windows blown out, and the yard was littered with the leftovers of its once very solid brick mailbox. Whether Genesis's Barrier had fully protected me or not, I felt very grateful for it. I didn't think I would have survived at all without it.

Loki still knelt, shifting through the burnt van bits. He picked something out and stood up, examining it. "This is far too advanced for Bianca," he was saying. "She can come up with elaborate plots, but she's no inventor. Gunpowder and poison are about as far as she can go."

"Are you perhaps suggesting that someone else got through?" Sephiroth asked.

Loki shrugged. "I'm just musing out loud. Maybe she made contact with someone clever in this world."

"_Crap_!" Genesis said. He wasn't being very eloquent today. "Well, I've taken care of her eardrums, whatever concussion she may've had, and lowered her adrenaline levels, anyway," he said, standing so that all I could see of him were his boots. Such nice boots. I wanted boots like that. "Normally I would've been able to heal her completely in a matter of seconds." He sounded more than a little bit frustrated and weary. "Were you two saying that someone _else_ may have gotten through?"

Sephiroth and Loki both shrugged. Genesis swore again.

Genesis started muttering under his breath again, and I realized he was quoting something.

"_When the war of the beasts brings about the world's end_

_The goddess descends from the sky _

_Wings of light and dark spread afar_

_She guides us to bliss, her gift everlasting_'"

"Oh, don't start _that_ again," Loki said, sounding irritable for the first time.

I looked at him, trying to focus my eyes. Loki wasn't dressed like a normal person this time. He was wearing a jumpsuit type thing, although I couldn't really see very well. I hoped that my glasses weren't broken, wherever they'd gone.

Sirens started blaring somewhere off in the distance.

"We'd better get out of here, she'll be fine," Loki said.

I wanted to say something waspish about not talking about me as though I wasn't there, I could hear now, y'know, but my brain had not yet reestablished communications with my vocal chords.

Genesis trotted down the driveway towards the others, held both arms out to his sides and brought them together with a sharp clap. A fiery flower burst from his hands and expanded, engulfing all three of them, and then with a whoosh it swirled into itself and vanished in a puff of smoke.

_Typical Genesis, _I thought. Fiery and flashy and impressive and just _slightly_ effeminate.

As the sirens got closer, I tried to think of a way to explain things that wouldn't make me sound insane. Maybe I should just say that something exploded, I was still alive with my hearing intact, and that's all I knew.

I was still struggling to sit up when the fire department and police started to arrive. A minute later an ambulance arrived, too. There were so many people all over the place, it made my head spin. Neighbours were finally pouring out of their houses, now that authoritative figures were here to protect them, and said authoritative figures were scampering hither and thither, trying to figure out what had happened, checking everyone for injuries, and barging heroically into houses to safely dispose of broken mercury laden fluorescent light bulbs.

And the EMTs wouldn't leave me alone. Okay, so I was having trouble sitting up, so my entire front half of my body was reddened and beginning to swell, so my nose was basically just a giant goopy scab-in-progress, so I had little streams of blood coming out of my ears, couldn't they let me be?

At least they helped me sit up. And they found my glasses lying in the grass. That was nice. I took my spectacles and put them on, blessing Genesis and his barrier for keeping my lenses from blowing out like the neighbours' windows. Like my own house's windows, actually, I thought as I turned my head to look at it. Mom and the others must be having fits in there.

I kinda wondered why they weren't out here. I just got blown up, did my family care?

The EMTs were trying to figure out how I'd gotten away with so little injuries. They seemed curious to know why my ears had bled even though my hearing was perfectly fine.

I ignored them. My family totally cared. We were a very functional, close-knit family. They cared. Five people, besides me, lived in that house: my mom, my dad, my older sister and my two little sisters.

So where were they?


	3. Chapter 3: Asylum

**Written by Ryuu**

* * *

**Chapter 3: Asylum**

_He smiled. Bianca's antics were quite entertaining. She was a firecracker, feisty and _almost_ completely useless. He just had to do one more thing, one more test. If this worked…_

_He knew one thing: there was no way that a tenderhearted teenage girl could have invented him._

My family wasn't there. Police had combed the house, but they weren't there. No one. Oh, the dogs were still there (I'd had to chuck the two of them in their crates to keep them from barking at people and getting in the way), and the bird was still there, but not my family. Bile rose in my throat.

What was happening?

First a shower. For a little while getting clean was all I could think of, but then I relegated myself to not thinking _anything_. If I thought about anything, I might die. I dressed in a t-shirt, blue jeans and my comfortable brown leather boots. It was summer, but there was broken glass on the floor in some parts of the house. And it was a comfort thing. When I wore jeans and boots, I could take on the world. Normally.

The EMTs bandaged my nose. I started pacing, but the bustle all around me was beginning to be too much. It was hot outside, and because the front windows of the house were broken the air conditioning couldn't quite keep the heat out. I stopped and stood leaning against the counter in the kitchen, trying not to think, overwhelmed.

The heat, the smell of smoke. An EMT passed close to me. There were police officers all over the place, making noise and moving fast. I couldn't get my eyes to track a single one of them for more than a second. I closed my eyes and covered my ears and breathed through my mouth, but with three of my senses shut off I couldn't help but think. My. Family. Was. Gone. Mom and Dad and Laurie and River and Rose. Fear ate up every thought I tried to distract myself with. What had happened to them? Were they all right? Had Bianca got them? What was she going to do with them?

Sephiroth, Genesis and Loki had made it sound like they thought that someone else may have come to reality. Who? Images of my baddies, some clearer than others, flitted through my brain. Odin, Heimdall, Zinatinas, the Anarchists, It, Kaze, Eve, Lajhin, Brent…

If _any_ of them had my family…

Sensory and emotional overload swamped me simultaneously. I barely made it to the kitchen sink before I threw up, and then I flopped into a sitting position and passed out on the kitchen floor.

I shivered a little, not so much from the cool as from the adrenaline that always accompanies puking. The rain gently patted my head as I huddled against the trunk of a tree, gazing at the pool of water. The sound was soothing, quiet trickling and the pitter-pat of water droplets on leaves. Very, very far off I could faintly hear thunder.

Solitude. Solitude was underrated. I breathed deep, not even able to remember why I'd been craving solitude. I didn't care. The smell of rain calmed my pounding pulse. I exhaled and looked up. I couldn't see the sky, just a ceiling of green. The trees were tall but thin and evenly spaced. They looked very Asian.

A slight breeze touched my cheek. I leant my head against the tree trunk, closed my eyes and smiled sleepily.

"Yo!"

That was jarring. My eyebrows contracted slightly.

And then I gave a little cry and scrambled to my feet, startled.

"Talk about delayed reaction," Hóuzi said.

"Shut up," I growled. "What do _you_ want? You're spoiling a lovely dream."

Hóuzi rolled his eyes, slipped off his hoodie and tossed it at my face. "You're going to get hypothermia if you're not careful, you know."

"It's just a dream!" I protested. I slipped his jacket on anyway; I _was_ feeling a little chilled.

Hóuzi smiled, cocking his head at me. "You sure of that?"

I opened my mouth to retort, when I remembered that I'd been trembling from adrenaline after throwing up in reality. That was a little unusual for a dream.

And then I remembered why I'd thrown up, and I wanted to throw up again.

Hóuzi gripped my shoulder. "You all right?"

I took in a rattling breath, and slowly let it out. "Yeah." Which was a complete lie, and Hóuzi knew it. "So, ah, where am I, if I'm not dreaming?"

"Um, I'm not very good at explaining…" Hóuzi said, sheepishly scratching the back of his head. "You're in Asylum."

"Which is…?"

"It's…well…" He sighed. "How about we go find the others? They're better at explaining than I am." He began walking, gesturing for me to follow.

"The others? You mean like Sephiroth and Genesis and Loki and Hal?" I asked as I trotted after him.

"Yes. There used to be more, but they all were able to leave."

"Will you just _explain _already?!"

"And will _you_ just use your head?" Hóuzi snapped.

I stopped in my tracks, staring at him in shock. He'd just snapped at me. He was _mad_ at me. Hóuzi wasn't supposed to get mad.

Hóuzi's expression changed from glaring to slightly guilty when he saw my shocked face. "Sorry," he said. "I just…Kaitli, you've been here before. I know you've had an awful day, but if you really used your head, you might be able to figure out what this place is."

I started walking again, racking my brains. "Well, when I first met you, you mentioned that you thought that Bianca had come through Asylum to reality," I mused out loud.

Hóuzi didn't answer.

And then something clicked. Hal had talked about them figuring out how to pop into reality on their own. Sephiroth and Genesis both did those nifty disappearing tricks. They all knew each other, and apparently spent a lot of time together, but not in reality. So where?

I spoke slowly, carefully. "Is Asylum like the Wood between the Worlds? I mean, is it sort of a bridge from fiction into reality? An _in between_ place?"

Hóuzi smiled. "Eh, you got part of it, sort of," he said.

"So I've been here before? Why's it called Asylum?"

"You're the one who named it that."

I spent the rest of my walk trying to remember. The place felt vaguely familiar, and my memory wasn't exactly stellar quality, so I believed Hóuzi. I would be able to tell if he tried lying to me. Not like he would…I hoped.

"We're here," Hóuzi said.

I'd been watching Hóuzi's feet as I'd walked, lost in thought. There wasn't much to see, anyway. The forest was beautiful, but it was all the same: trees and the occasional pool, and very, very green grass. Now I stared, gaping at the mansion before me. While the forest seemed East Asian, the mansion gave off distinct English countryside vibes. The kind of house to belong to an eccentric, absent minded professor. It was old, leaning ever so slightly to the side with vines and moss all over it, but not falling to pieces. I hadn't realized until now just how tall those trees were, seeing them tower above the building, leaning slightly over it and blocking out the sky with their spreading branches. Wildflowers dotted the ground everywhere within a fifty yard radius of the mansion, and colourful birds flitted about, chirping and partaking of a decrepit birdbath and several feeders. The only birds and flowers that I'd seen here.

It was beautiful. I wanted to live in a house like that, old and mysterious but not unwelcoming.

Now _this_ I knew that I had never seen before in my life.

"Hóuzi, what is this?" I asked, a little breathlessly.

Hóuzi glanced sideways at me. "We just call it Refuge House. Some of the more poetic among us call it Sanctuary."

Asylum, Refuge, Sanctuary.

"Is Asylum the place I run away to when I'm stressed or scared?" I asked.

"Sort of," Hóuzi said.

We had made it to the front door. Hóuzi reached out for the doorknocker, but before he could use it the door opened, and a rather flamboyant ginger-brown head appeared.

"I win." Genesis opened the door farther and stepped back out of our way.

"But I wanted to use the doorknocker!" Hóuzi grumbled as he walked inside.

The walls of the—well, I supposed it was an entryway—were beautifully polished wood; I decided that they were oak, though I didn't actually know how to tell. The floor was covered with a dark green and very soft and squishy carpet. I whipped off my boots and socks, letting my feet sink into it, wiggling my toes happily. Hóuzi had done the same. Even Genesis was barefoot. He also wasn't wearing his coat or his sword. He must feel very secure here.

It was odd, seeing him without any red. I liked him like that, clad only in the SOLDIER regulation sleeveless turtleneck, belts and trousers. He looked almost human.

We shuffled—you just _had_ to shuffle in that carpet, you didn't want to take your feet off of it—our way down a hall lined with doors on either side. The hall angled downwards, and we entered a library type room at the bottom. The carpet was still dark green, potted plants all over the place, nestled in corners and hanging from the ceiling. I could barely tell that the walls were still wood because bookshelves lined three of them, while the fourth was nearly completely covered in maps, except for the window about halfway up the wall and level with the ground outside, providing a lovely view of grass and flowers. There was a mahogany table piled with books, and a beautiful rich brown sofa next to it.

I didn't have to see the dreamy expression that came over Genesis's face to figure that this was his favourite place in the house.

_Bookworm_, I sniggered to myself.

I shuffled over to the wall with the maps, my curiosity itching like mad. Were they maps of Asylum?

They weren't. They were maps of Middle Earth and Narnia. I eyed them almost hungrily, and scanned the others. Hyrule, Gaia, Prydain, Ingary…Mossflower, even! I shifted to the next one. I didn't recognize it at first. It was a large, roundish continent divided into four pieces.

And then my eyes lighted on the title. Shelaga. _My_ country. _I'd_ made that up. But while I'd tried once or twice, I'd never finished drawing out a map of it. So what was a remarkably detailed map of my fantasy country doing here?

The next map was Geat. I'd never even attempted drawing that place out. I only had the vaguest idea of its geographical layout. But the map was so detailed…

"You coming?" Hóuzi asked. He and Genesis stood by the doorway, Genesis leaning up against the doorframe and yawning.

I pried myself away. "Where—where did those come from?" I asked, looking back over my shoulder as I followed the other two out of the room.

Genesis shrugged, somehow managing to swagger slightly as he shuffled. "They were all there when I got here, and when I asked around about them, everyone said the same. They've always been there." He fixed me with a piercing mako-blue gaze. "Why?"

"I made up two of them—Shelaga and Geat."

His eyes narrowed slightly. "Really?"

I stared determinedly at his nose. I opened my mouth to insist that yes, I was pretty sure I'd made them up, but something made me hesitate. "We-ell, I _think_ I did."

He cocked an eyebrow slightly, pursed his lips a little, but just began shuffle-swaggering forward again.

We passed through several rooms, another hall, turned left, and ended up in a room with three walls that were actually large windows. I recognized it as a sun room, sort of like a porch that is sheltered from the elements. My brother Lawrence's house had one.

Thinking about my family made me feel slightly ill again. I wondered if my three brothers were all right. They didn't live at home anymore so I had no idea whether anything had happened to them.

A large white table resided on one side of the room, around which sat Hal, Loki, and Sephiroth. The carpet here was a pale spring green. The other side of the sun room seemed to be a kitchen, the carpet switching to tile.

Loki and Hal watched us come in. I felt awkward. I hadn't felt awkward around them before; scared, yes. They were both just looking at me. What was I supposed to do with them staring at me like that?

"Kaitli, you're bruised all over, it looks hilarious," said Loki.

Genesis looked slightly guilty and more than a little miffed. I scowled at Loki, but had to give him credit. The awkwardness in the air had vanished. There was something else in the air, though. The smell of…_crumpets?!_

There were crumpets on the table, all buttery and heavenly looking.

"Help yourself," Hal said, following my gaze. He gestured to the chair between him and Sephiroth.

I didn't like the idea of being between those two. I felt as though I didn't know Hal at all anymore, and I knew Sephiroth all too well. But Sephiroth was asleep, and Hal seemed to be a little less snarky than before, so I went ahead and sat down. Genesis and Hóuzi sat as well, on either side of Loki.

I suddenly realized just how hungry I was. I'd spent the afternoon mowing, getting blown up, going through very high amounts of stress, and then throwing up whatever little had remained from lunch. Once my eyes adjusted to the dazzle of crumpets, I saw bacon and eggs and toast—fried toast! And there was jam and butter.

I barely remembered to swallow my food before asking, "Where does the food come from?" The author in me was dying to know. If I didn't find out, it would bug me for eternity. There were no pigs or chickens here, and I somehow doubted that the seemingly endless forest of Asylum had fields to grow wheat. I poured myself a glass of orange juice. Nothing as tropical as oranges would grow here, either.

"It just appears," Loki said.

"It appears and then Hal cooks it," Genesis said.

"Appears?" I repeated skeptically.

"In the pantry, refrigerator and freezer, yeah."

I smeared some strawberry jam on a slice of fried toast. This stuff was probably incredibly unhealthy. "It seriously just appears?"

"Yeah, and we were wondering where it all came from for the longest time, but then something that I recognized from the ShinRa cafeteria turned up," Genesis said, "so we think that the food just sort of gets pulled into existence out of our worlds a little like we did."

"How'd you know it was from the ShinRa cafeteria?"

"ShinRa cafeteria food is…distinctive." Genesis shuddered.

I adventurously nibbled on a bit of sausage, but I put it down rather quickly. It tasted amazing but the texture was that of a hot dog on steroids. I'd heard sausages described as "bursting". I now knew what that meant. Ew. "So, is it morning here? It was getting towards evening at home."

Loki shifted slightly in his chair to gaze at me. "Yes. I'm sure you could probably guess, but time runs differently here," he said. "You should get back home within a minute of when you left it, no matter how long you stay here."

He was still wearing his jumpsuit type outfit. It was mostly black with a little green, and his right shoulder was bare. I could see part of a tattoo. Because of the angle I was at, I could only make out the wingtips of a bird. It was light green; it must either have glowed or been reflective, because it was giving off light. He looked nearly identical to Tom Hiddleston, except that his eyes were dark green, and he had very, very faint scar, only about two inches long, that ran over the left side of his mouth. His facial structure was also different, subtly enough that I couldn't put a finger on exactly what exactly the differences were.

"So, Hal, you cook really well!" I said. "What other hidden talents do you have?"

Hal smiled slightly, giving me a hard to read look. I thought he was pleased. "I seem to be rather good at observing things and putting facts together to form theories." He paused. "I suppose that you would call me the detective type."

"I didn't know that," I said, confused. "I guess I don't know y'all nearly as well as I should, huh?"

"Well, we don't know ourselves very well, either," Hal said, a little sadly.

"What do you mean?" I frowned at him.

"Hóuzi and I came here without any memories," Hal said. "Almost everyone who appears here has no memory of where they come from. We're blank slates, it would seem. We may not have ever had memories to begin with. We seem to be waiting for you to give us a place and a story." He fixed me with his forget-me-not-blue gaze.

I shrank a little in my seat.

"Everybody else who has come here left again once they had memories. They never return. We don't think that they even remember their time in Asylum."

"But Genesis was talking about ShinRa cafeteria food, so he has memories," I said.

Genesis shrugged, hoisting his bare feet onto the table. Which was kinda gross, actually, except that they looked so well kept and clean and smelled faintly of apples. Good grief, that man…

"Sephiroth and I both came here with our memories intact, and were able to leave again. While we didn't initially remember Asylum, every once and a while we would just sort of pop up here. I think that it mostly happened in our sleep. Eventually the memories began to stick, and we learned to go back and forth at will. It's very nice here; it's peaceful and quiet. There are no snot-nosed directors breathing down our backs, no monsters, no paperwork, and it doesn't even take up any of our time. We get back within a minute of when we left." Genesis took a huge bite of sausage. I actually _heard_ it burst. I winced. Double ew. "Loki came here with his memories intact as well, though he isn't sharing them."

"We'd been pulled into reality several times before you actually saw any of us," Loki said, ignoring Genesis's last comment. "Genesis, Sephiroth and I began working out with Hal and Hóuzi how to travel to reality at will. We sent Hóuzi to you because we'd met Bianca here, and she vanished, and we thought from the unusual manner of her vanishing that she had gone to reality."

"And turns out she did," Hóuzi said with a piece of bacon sticking out the side of his mouth, "although it appears she bided her time for a few months."

"It's possible that she wasn't able to stay there long, rather like we weren't," Loki said. "You may or may not have noticed, Kaitli, but we kept disappearing rather suddenly and quietly for a while there. That was us being pulled back." His hands, which lay idly on the table, clenched. "I think it more likely that she just kept being pulled back to her own story before she had time to do damage. She's not really the 'biding her time' type."

Hóuzi conceded with a dip of his head.

My left hand, lying in my lap, clenched my pant leg. I wanted to ask if they knew where my family was, or if they were willing to help me get them back, but it didn't feel as though I had the right to. It felt as though they were merely putting up with me, and asking them for anything would be downright demanding and ungrateful. "Um," I said.

Everyone but Sephiroth looked at me. Sephiroth appeared to be sleeping still. I squirmed in my chair, trying to think how to ask. There was no way I wasn't going to ask, not with my family at stake, but I couldn't quite think how at the moment.

"Yes, we are going to help you."

My head whipped to my left so hard that my neck popped. "Oooow," I said.

Sephiroth's eyes were only half open, bright green staring at me from beneath black lashes. I gulped. His head hadn't moved at all, still facing in front of him, ducked down slightly in the position I'd mistaken for sleeping. His eyes were practically pointing out the side of his head to gaze at me. It was creepy.

"There's no way we wouldn't help you, Kaitli," Hóuzi said.

I was so startled I was having trouble stringing the correct words together. "I…I kinda thought that I…"

"…greatly annoyed us?" Sephiroth finished for me. "You do."

_Oh, thanks, yeah, I feel _much_ better now,_ I thought. I didn't say it out loud, though.

Genesis pulled a face. "_Mr. Tact_ strikes again," he said airily. "Ignore him, Kaitli. _I_ rather like you."

He sounded sincere, but then, Genesis could sound however he wanted to. And whether he actually liked me or not, I was pretty sure he was only supporting me now for the sake of taking the opposite side as Sephiroth. Still, I smiled at him gratefully. Solitude while you're alone is one thing, solitude while surrounded by people is a good deal more awkward and unpleasant.

"I like you too, Kaitli," Hóuzi said gently.

I smiled at him even more gratefully. Him I believed. Maybe he was angry at me for something, but he still liked me.

Hal and Loki didn't say anything. I sighed. At least they weren't openly saying they disliked me, unlike _Sephy_ over there.

"So," I said, "what are we going to do? When I get home, what do I do?"

Four pairs of eyes, including my own, shifted to look at Sephiroth. Genesis just glared at the ceiling.

"You stay calm," Sephiroth said placidly with just a hint of irony. "Staying calm" was not my strong suit. "When you talk to the police, you be completely open—except that you forget about us. Just temporarily."

"They would chuck you in the loony bin, otherwise," Genesis interjected.

Only Sephiroth's eyes moved, swiveling to look at Genesis. Genesis looked back, completely unperturbed. There seemed to be a silent battle for dominance going on here. Everyone else began to look very awkward. Hóuzi made a bit of a show listening to the birds chirping outside, cocking his head and gazing determinedly at a feeder.

I squirmed. Neither of them was going to back down anytime soon. Hal must have thought the same thing, because he began speaking, causing Sephiroth and Genesis both to look at _him_. He ignored them.

"You get your windows boarded up," Hal said, "probably with some help you call in. A social butterfly like yourself should have plenty of friends who would be perfectly willing to help you. Get someone to stay over with you, someone you can trust—like that Germanic looking girl you were with the other day, what was her name?"

"Nira," I said.

"She already knows about some of this, so get Nira to stay with you, probably someone else as well. At least two people. Do you know of anyone else who would be likely to accept this situation without flipping out entirely?"

I thought. "Louise, I think." Louise would be perfectly suited to this. Besides, I felt that if I had my two best friends with me I could face anything. "But will their parents be very keen on letting them stay with me after all this exploding and kidnapping?"

Hal shrugged. "Just start crying or something until they cave. Get Nira to bring her swords."

I flushed as Hal smirked ever so slightly. He _was_ observant; he'd noticed our little precaution the day before. But guilt tripping my friends' parents? That was going several steps too far.

"Your house will be our base of operations," Loki said.

"Wait wait wait—_what_?"

"We have to have somewhere to be in reality, you know," Loki said. "We can't just aimlessly float about trying to catch bad guys."

I blanched. Dealing with all five of them at once for extended periods of time? Loki just smiled.

"We all promise to be good," he said. "Don't we?" His eyes flickered from Genesis to Sephiroth and back to Genesis.

Genesis dipped his head slightly, Sephiroth lowered his eyelids shut.

"Well," Loki said, turning back to me and grinning, "go back home now! We'll be with you at some point."

Two questions crowded onto my tongue at once: "How do I get back?" and "What about my shoes?" As a result of overcrowding, however, my tongue shut down, and neither question actually got asked. Next thing I knew, I was lying on the kitchen floor, staring up at official looking people with concerned looks on their faces. Oh, joy, this was going to be just oojles of fun, I could tell.

* * *

**AN:** I actually spent a few days editing this...I trimmed off 602 words of total unnecessary-ness. I'm way too wordy. Thank you for reading this far! I'll try to continue to be more thorough with my editing.


	4. Chapter 4: Someone's Listening

**Written by Ryuu**

* * *

**Chapter 4: Someone's Listening**

_He grinned. Yes. Oh, yes. He knew it, he was right. This was going to be so much fun._

Detective Barak and paramedic Cecil rushed to Kaitlin Bender.

"Are you alright?" asked Cecil as he and Barak helped her to sit up.

"Mm," she said.

"What?"

"I'm fine!" she snapped.

Barak and Cecil raised their eyebrows at each other. She didn't sound like someone who had just passed out. They helped her to a chair, and Barak sat across from her while Cecil gallantly took it upon himself to rinse the kitchen sink.

Barak looked Kaitlin in the eye. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"Yessir," she answered blandly. She had a sort of deer-in-the-headlights stare going on.

Barak glanced up at Cecil. Cecil nodded. Barak looked back at Kaitlin. "Do you feel well enough to answer some questions?" he asked gently.

Kaitlin took a deep breath and nodded. "I think so."

"Do you have _any_ idea where your family could have gone?"

Kaitlin shook her head. "All I know is that they went against their will," she said.

"And how do you know that?"

"They wouldn't abandon me."

Barak sighed. "Are you sure?"

Kaitlin gave him a steely stare. "Yes. They would never, ever abandon anybody."

Barak rubbed his forehead. "Does your family have any enemies?"

Kaitlin shook her head. "We aren't overly social. Most of the people we come into contact with regularly are at our church, and our church is pretty close knit."

"Look, Kaitlin, this whole situation doesn't make sense. First the bomb in the street, which didn't do any permanent damage, then there's your surviving it, and then your family disappearing without a trace, all of their cars are still here, so it's like they've just been spirited away. And you're not wealthy, though it seems silly to kidnap a girl's entire family and demand ransom anyway. Please, if you know anything, tell me. I want to help you get your family back."

"I know," she said, "but I can't think of anything. We honestly don't have any enemies, I…I don't know _what's_ going on…" Her eyes filled with tears.

Barak stifled his frustration. She just pulled the tear card. He would have to give her time to calm down and regain rationality. He sighed again. "Are you going to be alright here by yourself? Do you want me to help you contact any family or friends…?"

Kaitlin shrugged, blinking hard. "I have a couple of friends I could ask to stay with me," she said. "I think I can call them on my own, though."

Barak stood up. "You know to call us if you think of anything we need to know, or if the kidnappers contact you, or if you feel yourself to be in danger, right?"

"Yessir," she said.

Barak nodded. "Take care, alright?" he told her. "We'll do all we can to find your family. I'll be back tomorrow to talk to you some more."

"Yessir."

Barak left the house, shaking his head. He didn't like leaving the girl alone, but she was a legal adult, so there wasn't really anything he could do. Whoever had orchestrated this whole nonsensical situation must be a perfect lunatic, and an idiotic one at that. And little Kaitlin Bender was a really rotten liar.

* * *

I watched as the detective left. I felt terrible. He was just trying to help, and I'd lied to him. Of course, I couldn't really think of a way to tell him the truth, and I tried to tell myself that I was following orders, Hal's orders, but I still wondered…did I really have to lie? I hated lying. I did it plenty as a little girl, but I'd learned to hate it and I had hoped that I'd grown out of it. My idea of a perfect life was one where I didn't ever lie, where I didn't even gloss over the truth. I'd thought that I had gotten there.

I guess I hadn't.

I fought back sobs. I hadn't meant to cry, either, but the tears had come against my will. That poor detective. I half hoped that he didn't believe me.

And then it hit me. I'd just chosen to put my faith in my own fictional characters over real people, real police, real detectives, who knew what they were doing and, as an added bonus, actually existed. I wondered if I was insane or just stupid.

At least they'd sent my boots back with me. I scooped them off the floor and slipped them back on.

The EMT gently touched my shoulder. "Are you alright?"

People kept on asking me that question. No, Genesis and Hóuzi and Sephiroth and Loki and Hal never asked me if I was okay. And I really had decided to trust them over people like this EMT? Really?

No going back now.

"I'm alright, I think," I said. "I'm just a little—" I choked back a sob. Dang it! Sephiroth had said to stay calm, too. But I couldn't stop it.

I was beginning to feel a little ill again, and disoriented. The EMT looked seriously worried now. I had to dispel his concern, to get him to leave me alone; having someone interfere would get really really awkward. I could almost hear the inevitable conversation: "Who the heck is this long-white-haired weirdo?!" *stab* "Kaitlin, could you please dispose of the body…" "What did you do that for?!" "He called my hair white, it's _platinum_…"

I almost laughed out loud. The poor EMT.

"I'm fine, really, I just cry under stress." I took off my glasses and wiped my eyes with the Kleenex the EMT thoughtfully held out for me, bless his heart.

"Thanks, Mr…"

"Brian. Brian Cecil."

"Thanks, Mr. Cecil." I smiled at him through my tears.

Once he was really satisfied that I was fine, he left. The last police officers began trickling out the door too. They hadn't found anything, not a single clue.

Mr. Fontanalis from down the street poked his head in and told me he was off to buy plywood. His thoughtfulness nearly brought me to tears again.

I don't remember much from the phone conversations. I don't really want to remember, either. I'm very uncomfortable on the phone under normal circumstances, but as emotionally unstable and confused as I was, the experience was…hades. I tried Nira first. I called three times before her mom picked up the phone. I don't remember how I convinced Mrs. Wolff to let Nira stay with me, but somehow I did, and Mr. Wolff after her. It only took a few moments of explaining to Nira before she was game.

"Of course I want to come! What sort of friend would I be if I didn't? I wouldn't miss it for the world. Besides," here she giggled a little, "I do kinda want to meet Genesis. Please don't tell him I said that."

"I won't," I said, laughing. I nearly started crying again, set off by my own laughter.

Next, Louise. She picked up after about two rings, and I asked her if she could come and stay for an indefinite amount of time. I warned her that it could potentially be dangerous, I would explain more fully when she got here, assuming she could come. She was curious—aggressively so. I gave in and told her.

A long, staticky intake of breath. And then…

"HOLY COW THAT'S SO AWESOME! You aren't pulling my leg, right?"

"Louise, you just blew out my eardrum. It already got blown out once today. No, I'm not pulling your leg. And do you remember those sequels I wrote for Shakespeare class?"

"Of course! How could I forget? They were hilarious!"

"Well, according to my new fictional friends, Bianca is the one trying to kill me. Are you _giggling?!_"

"…I'm sorry, Kaitli, but somehow I find that really funny. Bianca, huh?"

"Yeah, she already tried to blow me up. I only survived because Genesis saved me. He also healed me—partially."

"Genesis is from that game, right? The one with that epic fight scene you and Nira showed me? He was the red guy, right?"

I grinned as I imagined the look on Genesis's face if he heard himself described simply as "the red guy". "Yeah, the red guy. And then there's Sephiroth and Loki and two original characters I made up myself."

"And _Loki?_"

"Yeah, but he's a different Loki from Tom Hiddleston Loki. I mean, he has dark green eyes instead of pale blue, he's got this little scar on his mouth and he wears this…jumpsuit type thing. He looks like futuristic Loki or something, though when I first saw him he was wearing normal clothes. He also isn't evil—I think. I hope. I dunno, it's weird."

"From what you've told me, weird doesn't even begin to cover it."

"Thou speakést true."

"I suppose you'll have to talk to my mom, huh?"

"Probably, yeah."

"You gonna tell her about the whole fictional people out to murder you thing?"

"Heck no! I barely know your mom, she'd think I was a loony!"

"Okay, I'll go get her. And Kaitli." She paused.

"Yeah?"

"I'm really sorry. About your family. I know how you hate to be alone."

A drop of salt water escaped down my cheek. "Thanks."

"But we'll get them back," Louise said firmly.

Louise got her mom, and I tried my best to explain to Mrs. Heathorn, and then to Mr. Heathorn, the whole situation—minus the fictional people thing.

And I may have started crying until they caved. But it wasn't on purpose.

Both Nira and Louise said that they should be able to make it by nine.

I vacuumed broken glass. Mr. Fontanalis came back with plywood. I helped—or tried to help—him nail up the boards. Hitting something was really soothing right now. Bay, Bethany and Mrs. Fontanalis showed up to help as well.

.

Only the windows were blown out, thank goodness. I guessed Genesis's barrier had disrupted the shockwave enough that it didn't make it to the television and light bulbs.

Before they left, Mrs. Fontinalis gave me a big hug. "Are you _sure_ you don't want any of us to stay with you?"

I hugged her back, blinking hard. "I'm sure. Don't worry, a couple of friends are going to come stay with me. I'll be fine."

"If you need _anything_, just call, alright?"

"Thank you so much," I mumbled, hugging her again.

"We'll come and check on you tomorrow, if that's all right."

I nodded. They left.

I shut the door then let the two dogs out of their crates and into the back yard. They were agitated, and they kept coming back to the door without having done their business. I gave up and let them back in. They were scared of fireworks and thunder; the bomb probably hadn't agreed with them very well.

"Bingley!" I exclaimed as the big black poodle slimed my hand. "Really?"

Bingley and Strider inspected their house, sniffing and then coming back to me, running off to sniff and coming back again. It wasn't just the smell of strangers that bothered them, I realized. They couldn't find the rest of their people. They knew that something was horribly wrong.

I inhaled slowly, trying to stay calm myself. I opened the fridge and reached for the chocolate almond milk. As I poured myself a glass, I remembered that Mom had bought this stuff because I'd begged her.

After everything that had happened, it was chocolate almond milk that pushed me over the edge. I sank to the floor with my glass, sobbing. The kitchen wobbled and contorted as my eyes flooded. Snot poured out my nose. I groped the counter above me for a Kleenex. Bingley licked my face.

"Augh, Bingley! That's disgusting!" I sobbed.

Strider pushed his little head against my leg. I stopped my quest for Kleenex and stroked the Italian greyhound's soft little ears. Bingley pushed his nose into my face. I cried into his fluffy head. Now I knew why Hal had told me to get friends to stay with me. As soon as I was alone, I lost it completely.

Drinking chocolate almond milk with two dogs rubbing up against me was going to be nigh on impossible. I put my glass on the counter above me and wrapped my arms around Bingley's fluffy neck.

The cockatiel squeaked gently from his cage, and began whistling, his own version of being comforting.

By the time nine'o'clock rolled round the air conditioning had managed to catch up. I sat at the table, cradling my now empty glass in my hands, waiting.

The doorbell rang. I opened the front door.

"KAIT-LIIII!" someone bellowed, and glomped me.

"Ouch," I said. "Hi Louise."

She had her parents with her. I glanced around them and saw the Wolffs emerging from their car.

Nira, Louise and I assured their parents that we would be fine. They promised to call something like twenty times a day, and I thanked them profusely.

I shut the door.

"So," Louise said. "First. You look terrible, are you alright?"

"I presume you are referring to my skin's new shade of bluey-green and this giant Band-Aid on my nose. Aside from that, yes, I am fine, thanks to a certain fictional person."

"That brings me to: second. Fictional people. Explain more fully, please."

I explained.

We sat around the kitchen table, staring at one another.

"Wow," Louise said quietly.

"Yeah," Nira said.

I just exhaled with relief. Nira had been able to help me explain in the beginning, but I'd done most of it on my own.

"So, when were they planning on showing up again?" Louise asked.

"Right now," said a voice behind her.

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck raise. Louise froze, scared stiff. Loki smiled and straightened, bringing his face away from poor Louise's ear.

Someone clapped me on the shoulder. I jumped and turned my head. Genesis winked at me, grinning. Nira stared at him, her fangirl smile spreading across her face for a moment before she wiped it off.

Hóuzi sat on the counter, munching on a peach. Hal was rummaging through the fridge, and Sephiroth leant against the wall, arms crossed and head lowered.

The dogs went bonkers. Bingley barked and spun in circles, while Strider howled at the intruders from a defensive position behind the sofa.

I looked back at Loki and Louise. Loki was no longer there. Louise saw me scanning the empty space behind her and shrugged.

Nira squirmed happily. Her inner fangirl was beginning to take over. Louise, who wasn't overly familiar with Sephiroth and Genesis, scanned the kitchen for Loki.

Hal and Hóuzi watched them. Being my own original characters, they didn't have any fangirls.

"So, Kaitli," Genesis said, gracefully seating himself between me and Nira. He _had_ noticed her little grin. "Loki and I have spent the past ten hours analyzing that explosion."

I held up my hand. "Um, the whole bomb thing was three hours ago."

"Your point being?"

I tilted my head to one side with a puff of exasperation. He knew _exactly _what I was getting at.

He let me glare at him for several seconds before he finally relented. "We told you, sweetheart. People who go to Asylum return to their world within a minute of when they left. Can't you figure the rest out?"

I continued to glare. I was exhausted, physically and emotionally. I barely had enough brain power to blink, much less work out the relationship between Time and Asylum.

Nira spoke up. "Can you enter other people's worlds at whatever time you like?"

Genesis turned, eyebrows raised. "_Very_ good. Kaitli, your friend here is quite clever. What's _your_ name?"

"Stop it," Nira and I growled simultaneously, though I expected she was squeeing on the inside.

"Well, what's your name?"

"I'm Nira, and this is Louise."

Genesis grinned all up one side of his face at them. I let out an exasperated sigh. Nira and Louise glared at him. _Honestly, that man…_

"Anyway," Nira said firmly, "you and Loki were analyzing the explosion…?"

Genesis grumbled, "You girls are no fun…" He cleared his throat. "Ahem! Yes. We analyzed it through what we remembered—Loki has a practically photographic memory, it's quite impressive—and we think that it was a tiny nuclear explosion."

I blinked, but I couldn't quite get my brain to string together a sentence.

Nira asked my question for me. "Then why isn't the road a radioactive waste? Can you even _have_ nuclear fission that stops that quickly? A reaction so tiny that it just blows up whatever it's contained in without continuing?"

"Nira, dear, if you start mixing magic up in things, stuff starts to get very confusing and a little counterintuitive." Genesis ran his forefinger up and down his mouth and chin thoughtfully. "It is improbable, yes. But Loki knows a nuclear reaction when he sees one—or so he says—and we both remember a light, a tiny little light that hurt our eyes for the merest instant. Surely you remember it as well, Kaitli. Right at the epicenter, like a little sun."

I shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know. I'm too tired to try and remember."

Genesis sighed.

"Have the dogs stopped barking already?" Nira said, looking around, confused.

It was definitely odd. I looked at them. They were both sitting quietly, although Bingley was squirming still and Strider quivered.

Hóuzi scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "I made a few soothing noises…"

"You speak dog?" I said blankly.

Hóuzi shrugged.

"Your face has changed colours again, Kaitli," Loki said.

Genesis winced and looked guilty again. I turned. Loki had just come out of my room, turning something thin and clear and square over in his hand. It was reflective and looked like plastic.

"Wait a second, what were you doing in my room?" I demanded furiously. Amelia and Louise glanced at me, startled by my outburst. This was their first time experiencing how my tired, limp dullness could snap into anger. I rather expected that we would all be learning the more unpleasant quirks of each other's personalities through this whole adventure.

Loki smiled again. He didn't have a large mouth, but his smile spread long and thin across his face, twisting his scar. "Nice poster you have in there."

I had several posters, but I had a sickening feeling I knew which one he was referring to. _Don't you dare say it,_ I thought, _don't you_ dare_…_

"It really is a lovely likeness of Sephiroth," he continued, smiling even wider. "I really like the dynamic aesthetic to it. Is the one wing symbolic? Because you do realize it wouldn't function at all in reality."

I wanted to kill him. I honestly wanted to run him through right there and then. I didn't know what I'd use, though; maybe I would borrow Masamune.

At least no one would be able to tell I was blushing through all the bruising.

I heard Genesis shift his weight slightly in his chair. I didn't dare look at Sephiroth. I just glared at Loki with every ounce of my being. After a few moments I deflated, slumping back, exhausted.

"Whatever," I said, suddenly too tired to care anymore.

Loki allowed his smile to fade off his face. He looked at me with something like mild curiousity, still thoughtfully fingering his little plastic thingy.

"What is that?" Louise asked.

"Ah," Loki said. "I was waiting for someone to ask. This, friend, is an OLED screen. It can display information or record visuals and sound."

"So it's like an iPhone, only even flimsier," Louise said dryly. "But what do you have that for?"

"Ah, see, you naturally assume it's mine, probably because Kaitli told you I seemed to be rather futuristic, am I right?"

Louise glanced at me. My eyelids were beginning to droop. "Um," she said.

"I do have plenty of OLED devices, they're quite common where I'm from, but this isn't mine. I found it in Kaitli's room."

I perked up. "What? What was it doing in my room?"

"Sticking to the wall, recording away, transmitting."

Genesis stood, pushing his chair back rather violently. "Who put it there?" he demanded.

"I don't know," Loki said calmly. "But there's another one here, look." He peeled another square off the wall beside him. "And, when I try to trace the signal…" He pressed a few spots on the black strip wrapped around his wrist. It lit up, displaying symbols I didn't recognize. Loki held out the square.

"NICE TRY :)" flickered in bright yellow. The message drifted up and down the screen for a few moments before fading.

"The diodes scramble, and the thing isn't even functional anymore. It's impossible to trace the past positions of the diodes, and therefore impossible to glean anymore information from it." He frowned down at it.

My skin was crawling. "Are there anymore?" I asked in a small voice. I didn't care about his embarrassing me anymore, I just wanted him and the others to find Bianca and my family and put a stop to all of this.

Loki shrugged. "Not that I could find in the ten minutes that I've been here. Whoever put these two up meant for someone to find them."

"Why?" Hóuzi asked. He walked over to me and put a hand on my shoulder.

"To psych Kaitli out. To say, 'Hey, I've been here, in your room, and I can watch you and listen to you all I like.'"

"Loki, stop talking," Hal said suddenly.

I trembled all over. I felt as though my entire body was made of jelly. "This wasn't Bianca," I whimpered.

"Do you know who it is?" Loki asked, trying to change his tone to something a little more gentle.

I shook my head. "I just know it's not her."

"You're right; there is no way that it could be Bianca." Loki bent the square between his fingers, bent it so far that it snapped. "She doesn't go into psychological warfare."

"So we're back to the hypothetical 'Someone Else'." Genesis placed his hand on the shoulder Hóuzi wasn't holding. Comforting warmth spread through me, as though I was munching on dark chocolate, and I stopped trembling. Genesis withdrew his hand and slipped a small green orb back into his pocket. Nice. _Very_ nice. He even knew Reduce Hysteria in Frightened Young People spells.

"How'd you manage that?" Hóuzi asked. He must have felt my shoulder relax.

"I just gave her a little extra phenylethylamine," Genesis said.

Hóuzi stared blankly at him. "Huh?"

"It's a monoamine alkaloid that—"

"Please use smaller words."

Genesis sighed. "It encourages people's brains to produce endorphins. I assume you know what an 'endorphin' is."

"Vaguely, sorta, maybe."

Genesis gave up.

I felt good enough to even sneak a glance at Sephiroth. He looked a little uncomfortable. His head seemed to be a little higher than usual. He shot me a look of pure venom. I looked away quickly. Oh, dear. So he didn't like feeling embarrassed very much. Now the whole thing was absolutely hilarious, and I nearly laughed out loud.

I went from viewing the poster incident with rage to apathy to hilarity in the space of a few minutes. That probably had something to do with exhaustion, I decided. I drifted off to begin beddy-bye-time preparations.

* * *

**AN:** Yay for phenylethylamine. Also yay for Wikipedia :P Yay for big words! Yaaaaay...

Yeah, I'm tired, and I don't want school to start up again. Poodoo.


	5. Chapter 5: Soy Sauce

**Written by Ryuu**

* * *

**Chapter 5: Soy Sauce**

I shouldn't have been surprised that I had nightmares all night. Stress often does that to me. My nightmares just aren't usually quite so…vivid.

It started out as one of my run-of-the-mill bathroom nightmares. I needed to go, and I needed to go badly, but the ladies' restroom had a bunch of guys in it and the stalls didn't lock properly. And then the spiders turned up. This was also fairly normal. I ran screaming out of the restroom into a department store, arms flailing as I tried to keep my reeling balance. A moment later I was no longer in a department store but in a dimly lit room. I had a vague impression of faint computer screens along the walls. I was scared, but I didn't remember why until I turned around, trying to find my way out.

That is when I see the Smile. There is a person belonging to the Smile, but I don't see the person, only the Smile. I want to puke, fear and revulsion spinning around in my head as my vision blurs. Everything begins to fade out of focus except for the Smile. The Smile gives an order—I cannot hear it, but I know that it has commanded someone to do something. I feel pain around my neck as someone grips me, pressing my windpipe closed and worse, squeezing shut the major arteries to my brain. I try to pry the fingers off of my throat, but they are rigid like iron. I feel a powerful wave of malice wash over me, though I cannot tell whether it comes from the Smile or the hand. I cannot scream. A pair of catlike, cyan eyes swims in my field of vision, fading into blackness. Soon everything is black, but I still feel the Smile, it is still there, it will not leave me alone.

"_Kaitli!_"

I sit bolt upright, panting, trying to tear the hand away from my throat, automatically searching for the Smile, frantically searching, it will not leave me alone, it has to still be here, where is it?

Someone turned on the light. I jumped, startled, closing my eyes against the light waves that tried to burn my retinas. And I finally realized that my hands were whapping at the air below my chin. There was no hand there. As I opened my eyes I knew that there had never been a hand. I blinked, looking from Louise's face to Nira's.

"Kaitli," Louise said, her voice tight. "You were…you were moaning, and tossing back and forth, and you were doing something weird with your hands."

"Like somebody was strangling you," Nira said, a little shakily.

I felt like I should not be able to speak, like my windpipe had been utterly crushed. Sleep had not quite relinquished its grip on me. I shook my head vigorously, trying to wake myself up. "I…" I began. My voice cracked and failed for a moment. I cleared my throat and tried again. "I had a nightmare."

"We noticed that," Nira said.

"Sephiroth was strangling me," I mumbled.

Nira and Louise looked at each other.

"I've no doubt he wanted to," Nira said, smiling a little at the memory. "I bet he wanted to strangle Loki, too."

"Loki has a real mean streak," Louise said solemnly. "I'm sure to him you're just a mewling—"

"Don't say it," I interrupted. "I looked that word up once. It was a 17th Century obscenity or something…"

"Oh," Louise said, looking a little disappointed. One more word taken out of her repertoire for conversation in decent society. It's always sad when that happens. "Well, anyway, I'm sure Sephiroth wouldn't _really_ strangle you."

"No," Nira said, "stabbing is more in his line of expertise."

"You're not helping."

"Sorry."

I just nodded. Should I try to describe the Smile to them? But I was tired, and more than a little bit afraid. I'd finally shaken the sensation of Sephiroth's hand crushing my throat, but I could not shake the feeling of the Smile. It was still there, somewhere, in the back of my head, or in reality, I could not tell. Perhaps it was in both. But I felt that it was far away, at least for now.

I lay back down and closed my eyes as someone turned off the light. I tried not to think about the Smile, but it would not leave me alone. I hummed a hymn to myself over and over and over until finally, I forgot about the Smile, and I was able to drift into sleep once again.

I woke to the smell of bacon. And crumpets. I rolled over. Eventually I might be able to summon the willpower to actually get up, but right now I just lay there and…drooled. I pressed my lips together firmly and jerked my head back from the puddle on my pillow. That was disgusting. I rolled again, this time onto my back.

The door to my room opened. I heard Bingley panting, Hóuzi saying "Get 'er!" Great. This was my mother's favourite way to wake me up, I wondered whether Nira and Louise had told Hóuzi about it or if Hóuzi had thought it up all on his little lonesome. I heard the shuffly-galumping sound of approaching poodle, but unfortunately I didn't roll onto my side quickly enough.

There was a "ga-thwump" of poodle pushing off the ground and into the air, and a sort of gagging "o-oooh!" from me as said poodle landed in my intestinal region.

I elbowed Bingley hard in an attempt to keep his paws from crushing my internal organs and sat up. Nira, Louise, and Hóuzi were all grinning at me from the doorway. I treated them to my special "I just woke up, now do me a favour and go DIE" glare. They giggled in unison—in _unison!_—and vanished again. I oozed out from the safety of my lovely, soft covers, straightened my pajamas, and fished around in my closet for clothes. As I draped a shirt and pants across my arm, I had a sudden thought. I shuffled out of my room and poked my head into the kitchen. I spotted Loki playing with the black strip of whatever on his wrist, apparently typing something.

"Do you think there's any more of those OLED squares in my room?" I asked.

Loki glanced up. "No idea."

That was helpful.

"Louise and I had him scour your bathroom with a fine tooth comb," Nira spoke up. "We changed in there."

"Thank you, Nira," I said, turning and walking into my bathroom, majestically shutting and locking the door behind me. Or I felt like I was being majestic. Being half asleep does odd things to my personality.

I emerged to find a plate of crumpets on the table, along with bacon and eggs and sausage and fried toast. I raised my eyebrows at Hal.

"Where'd you get this stuff?"

"Refuge House," Hal said. "I popped back and grabbed some things while the three psychos wondered around outside all night searching for clues and Hóuzi took a nap on your couch."

Brilliant. I felt so protected. "Nobody saw them…did they?" I asked apprehensively. The last thing we needed was the neighbours calling the police about whack jobs wondering around at night right after five people had disappeared.

"Give us a little credit, Kaitli," Genesis pleaded. He was sprawled in a chair, chewing on a sausage. Apparently he liked those. "Of course no one saw us. Those police guards are as blind as bats!"

Ah, so the police were still guarding the site. But I wasn't sure I believed Genesis. Genesis was not very good at not being seen, he loved being seen so much.

I turned to head toward the K-cup machine. Sephiroth was rummaging around in the fridge. He pulled out the bottle of soy sauce, popped off the lid with his thumb, and took a swig. I blanched.

"He's irritated because you don't have any alcoholic beverages stronger than beer here," Genesis explained.

"But aren't you two physically incapable of becoming intoxicated?" I said weakly, trying not to look at Sephiroth as he glided back to the table, soy sauce in hand. I thought about being irritated about the Sephy cooties now polluting the entire bottle, but decided that might be unwise.

"I like the taste," Sephiroth said softly.

It was fascinating how such a quiet tone managed not only to carry clearly across the room but also to pound on one's eardrums for attention. The guy was just talented, I supposed.

I oozed to the table with my coffee, rescuing the nearest couple of crumpets from Genesis the black hole. Somehow the man was managing to fit legions of crumpets in his mouth along with his sausage. I tried to avoid watching him eat. I also tried to avoid watching Sephiroth drinking his soy sauce.

"Um," I said, addressing Loki. Sephiroth and Genesis were on either side of me, and Loki sat right across from me. Looking at him was really my only option. "Hal said you and the two Neanderthals spent the night searching for clues?"

Whoops. I hadn't meant to call them that out loud. Genesis made what sounded like an indignant objection, although I couldn't distinguish any words through the crumpet-sausage smoothie plugging his pie hole. Sephiroth's only response was an extra loud gulp. I tried not to shudder. I could nearly _taste_ it. Did he realize how much sodium was in that? That stuff was practically saltier than _salt_!

Apparently Genesis was thinking something along the same lines. He finally swallowed his food and said gleefully, "You're going to have to drink tons of water and then you're going to need to pee all day!" as Loki tried answer my question.

"We found a burrito wrapper," he said.

"One usually measures water in gallons, not tons," Sephiroth murmured.

"Is the burrito wrapper important?" I asked hopelessly.

"The gallon is a measure of volume, the ton is a measure of weight. Yes, people usually measure water in gallons, but I was referring to the immense _weight_ of the amount of water you will need to drink after that soy sauce."

"Probably not," Loki admitted.

"I believe it is physically impossible to ingest an entire ton of water, much less multiple tons."

"Is that really _all_ you found?" I pleaded.

"Then _may_be you should stop _ingesting_ that soy sauce, before you have to drink all that water! You're ridiculous, you're like a little kid…seriously, just because a minor isn't able to provide you with hard liquor…"

A grin spread slowly across Loki's face. "You mean besides my recalling the license plate—"

_Swig, gulp._

"—number of the van that had the unfortunate accident in your front yard?"

"_What?!_" Louise and I yelled simultaneously.

"They were stupid enough to leave the license plate on?" Nira asked, frowning and leaning forward, apparently trying to ignore the crisis taking place on either side of me.

"That's disgusting! Will you just _stop_?"

"Don't look if it bothers you."

"Yupton has a very low crime rate," I commented. "The police here have nothing to do but stop people on traffic violations. I remember when my sister Laurie worked at city hall, there were people who came in complaining that they couldn't afford to drive through our town anymore because they keep getting fined for speeding. A vehicle without a license, especially a big van with tinted windows, probably wouldn't make it very far."

"_I_ know what this is. This is a temper tantrum because _Loki_ remembered the license number while _you_ found the burrito wrapper."

Sephiroth chugged—I swear that he _chugged_—the remainder of the soy sauce. Which was about three quarters of the bottle. All seven of us watched in a kind of fascinated horror as the rest of the black liquid vanished. Sephiroth lowered the bottle, his face completely expressionless.

The silence stretched for a very long time, interrupted only by Genesis's magnificent belch, which I could only assume was a sort of empathic reaction. I was surprised Sephiroth didn't need to burp at all. Apparently he had mastered the delicate art of chugging liquid without swallowing any air.

Genesis opened his mouth. My hand reacted before I could think, shooting up and clamping over his mouth. Hal, sitting on the other side of Genesis, had had the same idea, and his hand clamped over mine. There was no way Genesis was saying anything through _that_.

Loki began speaking again, slowly and in as soothing a tone of voice possible. No one wanted to know what Sephiroth would go after now that he was out of soy sauce. I didn't like the sparkle in Loki's eye, though. "I ran the number through a police database."

"Which you hacked in to, right?" Louise said. But even Louise tried to keep her voice calm.

"Yes I did." Loki smiled.

"You do realize that the FBI can in fact trace hackers if they tried hard enough?" I said, keeping my voice level. _Please don't bring the FBI down on my head,_ I added mentally.

Loki positively smirked. It was scary. "They might have trouble tracing technology that doesn't actually exist yet." He absently thumbed the black strip on his wrist. Several little displays lit up, and the keys that appeared on it weren't just images; the material had actually risen to form little buttons. I gaped. Nira and Louise also gaped.

"NanoCom," he said cheerfully.

I winced and glanced towards the silver psycho on my left. Cheerfulness, I knew, tended to grate on his nerves. He seemed calm enough. But then, he'd seemed calm chugging soy sauce, too.

"Is it along the lines of those OLED things?" Nira breathed. She leaned forward a little, blue eyes huge and sparkling.

"Yes, it's a little similar," Loki said, typing a few things into the little keyboard. Each key sent faint ripples of light along the screen when it was compressed. Five of us "ooed" and "awed", three of us clapped. Loki basked in the attention while Sephiroth's eyelids slid shut. We took Sephiroth's pseudo-sleeping as a good sign. Hal and I gingerly removed our hands from Genesis's mouth.

Genesis seemed to still be steaming gently, but all he said was, "And what did you find out about the van?" through gritted teeth.

"Ah, yes," Loki said, his tone still absently cheerful. He unwrapped the NanoCom-thingy from his wrist, straightened it out, and began to unfold it.

I sucked in my breath. What had looked like a two-inch-wide strip of plastic was actually a screen about the size of the average unfolded laptop. Loki bent it in the middle, folding one half upwards and touching a little icon in the upper corner. Just above the fold the screen stretched out a little strip that acted as a stand, holding the screen up, while a normal sized keyboard raised itself on the half still lying on the table. The keyboard part remained black, but ripples of green pulsed through the screen half, changing its colour.

Everyone except for Sephiroth jumped up and rushed around the table to lean over Loki's shoulder. It was a little crowded, actually.

Houzi's mouth hung open, and Hal just stared as though he couldn't quite process what he was looking at. Louise's fingers twitched convulsively, rather as though she was thinking about stealing it. Nira's face glowed with absolute delight.

Genesis ended up directly behind me. I heard him mutter something nasty under his breath about Loki attention hogging, and that's just a glorified laptop, but when I twisted round and looked at him his eyes were the size of materia.

Even Sephiroth's eyes half-opened, watching with an eerie air of curiousity.

Loki touched the screen, dragging a tab down from the top and expanding it.

"So, it's registered to a company called 'NextStep'," Houzi said, the only among us spectators capable of speech. "I've never heard of them."

"Of course you haven't," Loki said drily. "You haven't got memories." He cupped his left hand in his right, leaning his chin on them.

Houzi shot a glare at Loki. I looked determinedly at the screen, trying to ignore my character acting out of character again. It made me feel scared. Scared and…powerless? I shook my head. I always felt powerless simply because I was always powerless, why should it feel any different now?

"NextStep is a group of scientists attempting to initiate the, well, next step in technology, The Grid." Loki glanced up at me when I twitched. "No, it hasn't got anything to do with Tron."

Loki had done his homework on pop culture very thoroughly, I thought.

"The Grid is like the internet, only much, much faster. Yes, that's the short answer. No, I don't really want to explain it in detail, it would take too long." Loki brought up a picture of the lead scientist and poked the picture's face absently. "NextStep reported a van being stolen a few days ago."

"They're based in _Dallas_?" Nira burst out.

I scanned the screen until I spotted the address. "That's like a two hour drive from here!"

Loki leaned back, folding his arms. "Who here can drive?"

Genesis raised his hand, hopping up and down slightly. Sephiroth's left forefinger twitched upwards slightly. Nira, Louise and I remained sheepishly silent.

"Seriously?" Loki rolled his eyes. "Okay, you two," he glanced from Genesis to Sephiroth, "which of you are aware enough of the traffic laws here and the way the cars work to drive without getting killed, arrested, or Kaitli's parents fined?"

No one moved. A grin slowly stretched over Loki's face, the same long thin one he'd had right before he'd kindly informed the party of my Sephiroth poster. "_I_ can."

I'm pretty sure the phrase "Oh, monkey crud muffins" or some variation thereof ran through everyone's mind right then. I reluctantly went and fetched one of the spare keys. This was not going to end well.

* * *

**AN:** I had the hardest time writing this chapter-that is, until Sephiroth decided to get all passive-aggressive with the soy sauce, bless 'im. Or curse 'im. Seriously, the man has no taste buds.


End file.
